Rafiqun Nabi

Rafiqun Nabi b.1943

Few painters have been able to give such childlike wonder to images of Bangladesh’s rural beauty. Whether it is a lone bird, a goat grazing on the grass or the bandor wala (monkey man) making his monkey play tricks, Nabi’s expert strokes and soothing hues, never fail to delight. Famous for his ‘Tokai’ series (under the name of Ranabi), the artist this time at Dhaka Art Centre (DAC) displays his works of rural Bangladesh, with the finesse and grandeur of his years honing a God-given gift.

He has shown crows and buffalos as well as goats and done them in such graphic detail that they leave an indelible mark on the mind. His hills, valleys, clumps of trees, thatched huts, the depiction of grey sky-scrapers of the concrete jungles of the cosmopolitan cities are there too. Meanwhile, he separates his figures by leaving a lot of white or egg-yellow, with faint inter twining lines of brilliant orange. The greens that he uses for the main tree clumps are jade and emerald. The mauve that we find in the sky that merges with seas and land are in variations. When he portrays people he remembers the colour of their headbands, headband and “lungis” or sarongs.

Education:

1964 : Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bangladesh College of Arts and Crafts (presently Institute of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka)